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What happened 47 years ago yesterday? Pope Paul VI published a magisterial teaching called “On Human Life” that stood up to the sexual revolution. Humane Vitaewas published on July 25, 1968, just at the edge of the precipice that we have since slid over. As the Bishop of Assisi told us today (he stopped by the rectory to speak at a retreat we held for natural family planning teachers), we don’t even know if we are man or a woman anymore. I would say that we are now in free fall, and I don’t know where we will land.People think of Humanae Vitae as an encyclical on birth control, but it goes much deeper and broader, to fundamental definitions of the human person. Almost fifty years later, it still appeals to all people of good will to revere the human body because the body is integral to the human person. Disrespect for the human body began with Adam and Eve, and Margaret Sanger articulated a new kind of disrespect which she called “eugenics.” Hitler put eugenic principles into practice, and it has taken many forms since then, most especially in the industry generated by Planned Parenthood. But eugenics did not begin as abortion; it began as contraception. Paul VI’s begins the document with these words: “The transmission of human life is a most serious role in which married people collaborate freely and responsibly with God the Creator. It has always been a source of great joy to them, even though it sometimes entails many difficulties and hardships.”I vividly remember the first time I read Humanae Vitae, in 1983, when was 21 years old. I had just graduated from college, having dated a beautiful girl for two years, with all the trauma and euphoria of a man’s first deep relationship with a woman. I never touched her sexually, because my mother told me not to. I trusted Mom, and she gave me some practical reasons to save sex for marriage, but it was in Humanae Vitae that I first glimpsed God’s breathtaking rationally-ordered plan for human love. Human love—a complete gift of body and soul—was possible! He does not command the impossible, and here in this encyclical, was a blueprint for authentic human love. At age 21, still infatuated with my first love, my eyes full of stars, I had a lot to learn about what is actually possible in human relationships. But nothing that Humanae Vitae revealed to me that day has not proved true. Humanae Vitae is a north star for us, drowning as we are in the seas of the so-called sexual revolution; it not only guides us in the regulation of births and sexuality, but gives us hope to believe in the dignity of the human person.Fifteen Natural Family Planning teachers spent a morning at my parish yesterday. They believe in marriage, in the goodness of the human body, and the potential for life-giving sexuality. I was so encouraged by their joyful commitment to the Church’s teaching, as fresh today as they were in 1968. If you get a chance, read or reread Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae. It is our north star.

Three of the Oxford Oratory Fathers at St. Philip’s altar in their parish

Yesterday St. Philip Neri turned 500. He was born on July 21, 1515, in the city of Florence. He left home a young man, worked a year or two at his uncle’s business in Naples, and then was led “by divine guidance” to Rome, where he spent the rest of his life. He stayed the course, and he stayed put; this affable loyalty to the local people came to mark the Oratorian vocation. There’s something quite winning about a man who is content to spend his entire life in one place, with one set of neighbors. “Keep it local,” as they say. Today Fr. Frank Filice will lie in state at the San Francisco Cathedral while the Archbishop offers Mass for his soul. He grew up in this city (attending St. Anne’s School), married a local girl, never went farther than the other side of the Bay for his doctorate, taught at the University of San Francisco, suffered the death of his wife, got ordained for the Archdiocese of San Francisco, and served the local people for 35 years as their priest. Like St. Philip, and under his patronage, he stayed the course, and stayed put, establishing an Oratory in San Francisco, which lasted a good few years but eventually relocated to Mexico. On this day, the day after the 500th anniversary of St. Philip’s birth, we can only hope that, with God’s grace, a second attempt to establish an Oratory in San Francisco will take root. This beautiful city provides an ideal setting for the urban and cultural milieu in which Oratories flourish. It’s been a rocky start, in part because the Oratorian way of life is unfamiliar to many and, I must admit, Fr. Driscoll and I have made some well-intentioned but imprudent decisions in the first year. Last month, at the Oxford Oratory, I witnessed the joy that a stable community of priests has brought to a local church. The Oxford Oratory also faced certain difficulties in the first few years, but they stayed the course, and stayed put. We hope to give a birthday gift to St. Philip here in San Francisco: that if it please God, we be permitted the grace to establish the great blessing of an Oratory in San Francisco. We are so grateful to the support we have received from so many priests and laity alike. May God reward you all!

Their lack of faith“Jesus,” the Gospel tells us today, “was amazed at their lack of faith.” That’s very bad news, like getting a rejection letter from the college of your choice, or being dressed down by your best friend. Jesus’ question, “when He returns, will the Son of Man find any faith on earth?” haunts us. To be told our faith is inadequate is very painful, and I’m sad to have to say that the faith on which our nation was founded is rapidly evaporating. Sunday Mass attendance is a good barometer of faith. Only about 25% of the Church in this country follow this minimum requirement, even though Jesus is clear that without the Eucharist we die (“Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man, you have no life in you”). Of course, most of us here at Mass are faithful to the Mass, but what about the 75% who don’t join us on Sundays? We must find a way to help them. “Son of Man,” God told the prophet Ezekiel in the first reading, “I am sending you to the house of Israel, rebels… they and their ancestors have revolted against me to this very day.” Rebels, yes, but beloved of God, or he wouldn’t send his prophet. “And whether they heed or resist—for they are a rebellious house—they shall know that a prophet has been among them.”They must know that a prophet has been among themDo you have children or grandchildren? You are that prophet to them--you must find a way, even if that means only making the sign of the cross at meals. They must know that God exists. Do you work with others in an office, or a lab, or in the entertainment industry? You are their prophet, even if it means only wearing a cross, or saying you will pray for them in distress, or say “God bless you” or Merry Christmas instead of Happy Holidays. Be brave, be confident witnesses to the love of Jesus to them. It means refusing to gossip, and refusing to cheat, and refusing to swear when everyone is doing it. They must know. They must know that they are loved. Rights endowed by their CreatorWe celebrated the Birth of our nation yesterday. In 1776 the Continental Congress witnessed powerfully to God’s law by writing the Declaration of Independence. All people, they wrote, are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, rights and duties in accord “with the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” On a lighter note, I had breakfast in England yesterday (July 4th) and mentioned to the priests at table that it was the anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence. “Please excuse,” I murmured, “any unpleasantness between our Congress and your King in 1776.” “Oh no!” Fr. Dominic replied with a beaming smile. “Best thing that could’ve happened to us. I’m all for people governing themselves.”Yes, it is God’s will that we govern ourselves, but in accord with God’s natural laws. Tragically, five of our Supreme Court justices last week departed from the principles set forth in our Declaration. But wonderfully, four Catholic justices courageously witnessed to the laws of nature and of Nature’s God. Not King George, not President Obama, not even our Supreme Court has to authority to endow us with these fundamental rights. Only God can do that, and we will lose these rights if we disown Him from whom they come. Do the people we work with, do the people we sit with on an airplane, do the people we stand with in the check-out line—do even our own relatives and friends—know that a prophet has been among them? Have they heard us speak of God, and seen His Word shining in our lives? The Prophetic TaskIt’s not easy. We will fail and at times disgrace ourselves in this prophetic task. We will say the wrong words at the wrong time, we will get angry, we will get confused. But we must try. Jesus himself failed to work miracles in that district because most people rejected him. The pressure to conform to secularist doctrines, to deny God’s existence, is intense in our country right now. But in the end we must all go before God and answer this question: did your friends and relatives, did your co-workers and neighbors know that a prophet had been among them? We are grateful for the manifest blessings of living in this country, and gratitude expresses itself in service. I can think of no better service to our country than in calling her back to her original greatness, one nation under God, founded on the virtues of true religion, faith in a power higher than ourselves. In that way we uphold the principles of our Declaration and our Constitution.

We must turn to Our Lady for inspiration and consolation. She will help us know how to speak and when to speak the truth, the truth in love. No one will listen to us if we do not speak with love. Let us pray our rosaries, let us be faithful to Mass and confession, let us study our Bibles and our catechisms holding the hand of Our Lady, and we will indeed be the prophets, the witnesses, the Catholics that God calls us to be.

Happy Fourth of July (especially to those reading this at the Saturday vigil Mass). I am so happy to be back at my parish after a month away. The retreats I gave to the sisters focused on the splendors of the Holy Eucharist, and I look forward to offering some of these talks here in the parish this year. I recently flew into Washington for the annual family reunion. On my way home, driving through Baltimore, I noticed a sign for Fort McHenry Historical Park. Off I went to explore. In 1814Great Britain had just burned Washington and had positioned a fleet of ships off Baltimore to gain access to the rest of the country. It shelled Fort McHenry all night in order to gain access to the harbor, but the fort held. In the morning, Francis Scott Key, a diplomat held captive on one of the British ships, saw a flag being hoisted through his tiny spyglass. Would it be British or American? With copious tears, he saw it was his own dear flag, and he wrote these words: “O say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,...those broad stripes and bright stars…” As I watched the movie in the visitor’s center, tears flooded my own eyes. I guess I’m getting old and sentimental, and more patriotic.... We should be grateful for the gift of America. Grateful to God more than proud of ourselves: grateful for American goodness and fidelity to the natural law over these 250 years. Let us pray that our country remain faithful to her Declaration of Independence, that all men are endowed by their Creator with the rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. We have lost our way, I’m afraid, in the pursuit of happiness and liberty, because many Americans no longer have the right to life. How many of us think “liberty” is doing whatever we please rather than following the “laws of nature and of nature’s God” as our Declaration puts it. Let us also sing the last stanza of our National Anthem, which gives the glory to God, not man: Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: "In God we trust." And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!God bless America!

They do not mean for this to happen, but it will happen anyway. Those who have worked so hard to redefine marriage do not mean to hurt the family, but the family will be hurt. The fact is that our Supreme Court has not so much redefined marriage as rendered it largely meaningless. If “marriage” can mean anything we want it to mean, then marriage means nothing. If we take the Court’s language seriously, then there is no rational argument now against polygamy or even against degrees of incestuous “marriage.” If marriage is thus destabilized, then those who will suffer the most are those who most depend on its stability—our children.Which is why I encourage you to attend, if possible, a Marriage and Family Conference sponsored by the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the California Association of Natural Family Planning (CANFP). Archbishop Cordileone, who is becoming an international spokesman on marriage, will deliver the keynote address (“Stewards of Our Bodies: Responsible Parenthood and the Spirituality of Stewardship”). He will also preach at the closing Mass of the Conference, which will be held August 21 and 22 at the Cathedral Center in San Francisco. I serve on the CANFP Board, along with Archbishop Cordileone, and many have been planning this conference for over a year. With last week’s Supreme Court decision, it turns out to be quite timely. Where do we go from here? What can we do to protect what remains of marriage and family life in America? How can we provide a nurturing culture for our children? I hope we can get some solid answers at this Conference.

For a full list of speakers and their topics, as well as registration information, please follow this link: https://www.canfp.org/education-events/statewide-conferences/2015-conference-aug-21-22. If you cannot attend but want to support this conference, please click the “donate” button on the bottom left of that page or consider sponsoring an ad in the program. I myself will be running about, listening to as many of the fine speakers as I can, and hope to see many of you there. Not only will this Conference afford us some excellent positive discussion about the future of marriage and family, but we will also show support for our dear Archbishop in his irreplaceable work.

The Oxford Oratory flies the papal colors on this feast day of SS. Peter and Paul.

The fathers and brothers of the Oxford Oratory have afforded me kind hospitality in their community for a week on my way back from Kenya. In the church yesterday I noticed two votives burning quietly beside the statues of Saints Peter & Paul behind the altar. June 29 is a holy day of obligation in Great Britain, and Fr. Daniel (parish priest and provost) thoughtfully prepared for the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. Wheeling my bicycle into the churchyard, I found him unfurling the papal colors over the portal. “In honor of the first Apostles of Rome,” he laughed, making oblique reference to the “Second Apostle of Rome,” St. Philip Neri, founder of the Oratory. Today is the 24th anniversary of my ordination, and the 64th anniversary of Pope Benedict’s priestly ordination, so I ask prayers for us both. I couldn’t be happier to have been ordained on this day, and 40 years after our beloved Pope Emeritus.

A Galilean fisherman and a Hebrew scholar built up the Church Christ had founded, buttressing it with their own blood. That Church remains the only free institution among all human establishments. The Church is free, meaning capable of building a rationally-ordered society, the “western” civilization of law, education, and social justice that serves as the basis of every ordered society. Christianity offers principles that allow every culture to develop to their full potential. Kenya, where I just spent ten days, has benefited immensely from the Christian principles of human rights and rule of law, and yet it remains distinctively African. But no matter where in the world you go, formal dress for men includes a necktie. This simple sign of self-respect and respect for others came through King Louis XIV, who adopted its use by the Croatian soldiers defending Christian France from the Ottoman Empire. I was charmed to see scores of boys kneeling to receive Holy Communion at the Oratory church yesterday in their tweed jackets and frumpy neckties. True enough, neither St. Peter nor St. Paul wore neckties, but in the world culture developed from the Church they developed, a tie expresses the Christian virtue of respect for the human person.At the core of this culture is a reverence for the “laws of nature and of nature’s God” in the words of our own Declaration of Independence. At the core of Christian culture is law, and not a law that we have invented, but a body of law that we write in accord with God’s fundamental Law, discovered through the use of human reason. Since the French Revolution, however, Europe has led a movement to throw off Christian culture and its understanding of law and freedom. It seeks to redefine “freedom” as mere “free choice,” the ability to do whatever I please. Pope Benedict wrote that freedom conceived as the mere absence of obligation would “inevitably play into the hands of fanaticism and arbitrariness. Absence of obligation and arbitrariness do not signify freedom but its destruction.”Last week our Supreme Court redefined marriage as personal “intimacy” rather than public “service.” If the marital bond is only private intimacy, it cannot possibly sustain our culture. If marriage is not at the service of the family, we will lose the primary means of social order. We will be left with only with the government. Ordering society by government regulation rather than family love has already been tried in Soviet Russia. It didn’t work.I’m sure the five Supreme Court justices have been asked: if marriage is essentially private intimacy, how can the Court deny a marriage license to a mother and son who feel such intimacy, or five men and a woman, or two sisters, or any other group of people who feel “intimacy” and want a marriage license? No one can deny the real feelings and commitments of same-sex couples, and to deny them marriage licenses does not have to be done disrespectfully. But if two men can marry, why can’t anybody else? The answer cannot only be that we disallow polygamy and incest because they tend to destabilize society. Only the natural family, open to children, has the inherent capacity to freely order (e.g., without government control) our lives together. I suppose, after the Court’s redefinition of marriage, American society will go on pretty much as it has for the last 40 years, meaning: basic stability but slow disintegration. In this case, however, a major pillar has been removed from the edifice of western culture, a column placed by SS. Peter and Paul many years ago which has stood fast through many culture wars. Perhaps the column will be replaced in a few generations, when we discover its lamentable consequences.

God only knows the future of our culture and our society. Let us pray to the twin Apostles of Rome, and to St. Philip, while we’re at it, the third Apostle of Rome, that God preserve us from evil. He will provide and protect, in ways that we cannot know, and so we must maintain our peace and joy.

My time here in Nairobi (10 days to give a retreat to the Missionaries of Charity) gives me a more distinct perspective on Pope Francis’ new encyclical. My walks through the slum where the Sisters run a homeless shelter show a level of ecological and social degradation we don’t see in the United States. Living in this environment, I find the Pope’s analysis compelling. He clearly defines the environmental situation as a “disaster” and a “catastrophe,” using the word “urgent” 15 times in the encyclical. Some would dispute how “urgent” the situation is, but when he cites studies predicting acute water shortages within “a few decades,” we in California can resonate. But Pope Francis is a different kind of climate change activist. He sees the problem as essentially spiritual rather than environmental: “The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.” We are trashing the environment because we are trashing Him who made the environment, and ourselves who are made in His image. And this scandal is most evident in the poor. Our abuse of the earth, air and water is unconscionable because it keeps 40% of our human family in dehumanizing poverty. We should exercise responsible stewardship of the environment not because we worship the planet but because wasting and over-stressing air and water directly harms the poorest among us. Good Christians respect plants and animals, but they respect their fellow human beings above all. We in the wealthy nations hardly feel the effects of environmental stress caused by a profit-driven economy. But thick pollution chokes the air here in Nairobi as buses pour black smoke into the streets (kind of hard to ride a bike beside them!). I asked a Kenyan why his government does not regulate bus and truck emissions. He replied: “In the United States, you can afford clean air. We can’t.” Last week I made a new friend, Steve, who repairs shoes under an umbrella on a muddy street. He has five children and can find no other work. I had him repair my running shoes. He cannot afford a car, let alone a catalytic converter.

Rafael, gardener at city park cemetery in Nairobi, with his three children, Imaculee, Angela and Thomas (with neighbor girl)

The Pope blames the “technocratic paradigm,” a belief that new technologies alone will solve every problem. His solution is conversion of heart, beginning with the natural family. The environment is collapsing because the family is collapsing. It is in the family that we learn to take only what we need, and to share with others at the table. Here in Kenya, the family is much stronger than in the United States. The physical environment is suffering (at least in the cities) but the social environment is quite healthy, at least for now. I rode my bike to the City Park yesterday to see the monkeys, which avail themselves of cast-off fruits from the market on the edge of the park. I went to visit “speaker’s corner,” a triangle of lush grass under a spreading acacia tree where folks rested and others practiced oratory. In the English tradition, this was a “common,” a green area owned by and kept green for the public. This year, sadly, the common had been opened up for parking and a large advertising billboard. Smoke and garbage and cars had replaced the green grass, and the acacia seemed like an embarrassed intruder into this newly-built market area.

I rode off to find the old cemetery I had discovered last year, hidden away in the middle of the park. I found the caretaker, Rafael, and his wife and three small children. “Karibu” he said in Swahili. “Welcome.” The City Council pays his salary, and he lives a simple but joyful life in the green sward of the cemetery, cutting back the grasses with his machete and keeping the tombs clean. We talked, the kids all told me their names and ages, and we prayed briefly for his family and the souls of the faithful departed (the men all doffed their caps as we prayed, and I was ashamed to realize I had not doffed mine—I snatched it off quickly!). What a beautiful family, I thought. Here is the core and foundation of Kenyan society, hope of stability for the whole political-economic-ecological matrix. People think the future of Kenya is its developing market economy, which is taking over the green areas, but it is right here, these five people, the God-given gift of the family.

Homily for the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2015“Who” is the question of the day. “Who,” not “what.” “Who shut within doors the sea, when it burst forth from the womb?” asks the Lord of Job in the first reading. “Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?” ask the apostles of the Lord in the Gospel. The principle that tames the restless sea is a Who not a What; the Big Bang at creation’s beginning was the utterance of Someone, not something. And so St. Paul says in the second reading, “the love of Christ impels us….” Not the love of the sea or the air or the trees, as strikingly beautiful as they are, impels him to sacrifice his life. Not even the love of a human person, as deeply endearing as he or she may be, impels him to sanctity. It is the love of Christ that moves the planets and moves men to reverence the planets.

Sister praying the Rosary at the MCs in Nairobi

Pope Francis’ long-awaited encyclical on the environment came out on Wednesday, and it is a beautiful document. But it is less about the environment than about the One who made the environment. When it comes to hard decisions between human prosperity and environmental concerns, only the love of God will lead us to fully respect the planet He has given us. “The destiny of all creation,” he writes, “is bound up with the mystery of Christ.” We cannot understand or effectively respect the planet without respecting the planet’s owner, who alone completely understands his own creation.

The fundamental problem motivating environmental exploitation, the Pope writes, is “anthropocentrism” and the “technocratic paradigm.” In other words, ignoring God’s existence in order to exalt man and man’s technological powers reduces the environment to man’s control, and we don’t have a very good track record of managing things we attempt to control. History will show that the strongest man, in any society that denies God, eventually takes what he wants. Is it coincidental that the great atheistic societies of our time (Russia and China) have committed the greatest environmental degradation? If God does not exist, why respect his creation? And that includes other human beings…. We must ask the “What” questions: What causes global warming? What drives the economy and what makes environmental solutions financially viable? What can we do to reduce emissions? What political and sociological remedies can we apply? But those questions are subordinate to the primary question of Who. Who made all this? Who will help us respect what He has given?

Job testifies that God exists, and that it is He who creates and loves the entire stunning array of natural beauty. Jesus manifests his absolute authority over nature by calming the sea, and gently rebukes the apostles for failing to trust him (“Do you not yet have faith?”). St. Paul also testifies to the love of God as the prime mover of the universe. “We have come to the conviction that one died for all.” Not only is God a prime mover, but he is the prime lover. He knows me; he loves me; he cares for me. I have my place among all that he loves: the sun, the stars, the trees, the flowers. I am not the owner but the steward of all these gifts. Realizing this love impels me to render due glory to the Creator, and to lovingly nurture the gifts he has given.

“Who is this that even the wind and sea obey?” He stands at the sea’s furthest dawn, guiding us through life’s day over the waters of creation to the perfect rest of uncreated beauty.

Yesterday I read most of Pope Francis’ new encyclical ‘Laudato Si’. I won’t comment until finishing the document, but so far I find it most refreshing. Like Pope Benedict, Pope Francis is concerned with the use of our natural resources but with the scandalous waste practiced by the wealthier nations. My good father taught all of his children to conserve—to turn off water and light and heat when not using them. I remember being scandalized that the landlord of my first college apartment (who lived upstairs) left the parking lot floodlights burning all day. A society that leaves lights on in the blazing sunlight is headed for disaster, I thought. How much effort does it take to flick off the switch in the morning? Since the 1980s we’ve gone from bad to worse in our wasteful habits. I still get slightly depressed when I see streetlights and parking lot lights left on all day—I want to shimmy up the light pole and switch them off.

MC sisters in Trinidad rejoice after their retreat with a visit from Pope Francis

But here I am with the Missionaries of Charity, whose carbon footprints are admirably miniscule. In the blazing heat of Trinidad last week, I sweated it out with the rest of them in a building without air-conditioning. They have plenty of money to install it, but will not out of humility and solidarity with the poor. I stripped down to shorts and a T-shirt while in my room, but the sisters never take off their habits throughout the day. They practice an asceticism that most are not called to, but which points out that its OK to sweat a little. Most of the time, in most of the country, we don’t need air conditioning. We can open a window, and we can sweat a little. Sweating in reasonable quantities is good for the body and good for the soul. It’s good to have some little bracing discomfort to offer up to heaven, especially for those who have no choice but to suffer.

MC sisters in Nairobi at adoration

Last night, here in Nairobi, the electricity went out, as it does about once a week. The chapel was growing darker, and when it came time for vespers, the sisters simply got up to open all the windows and light a few candles. They didn’t switch on a diesel generator that would spew noise and filth into the air. Meanwhile, the telecommunications facility across the field did switch on their generator, enveloping the house with noise and smoke. I wonder how the owners of the wireless network who own that generator (probably not Kenyans) were spending that hot night.

Let’s learn from our dearest consecrated religious women! Let’s learn again from our beloved nuns, as we did in elementary school! They live most of their lives on fresh air and the love of God. They don’t need to read Pope Francis’ encyclical (but I know they will), because they live it. I hope the Pope’s widely-acclaimed encyclical will be as widely taken to heart, so that we can share some of the joy of the pure souls who have been living it.

I am spending the Feast of the Sacred Heart this year in Trinidad with the Missionaries of Charity. It takes me a few days to adjust to the different noises, temperatures, foods, and sleep schedules of their mission house. By now I am toughened up and enjoying my brief annual experience of missionary life.The missionaries live with the poorest of the poor. This district is too dangerous for a white man to step beyond the barred and razor-wired compound; it makes me think of a military zone in Afghanistan or Iraq. Not bombs but rock and rap assault our convent and homeless shelter. The locals typically replace the back seats of their little cars with massive speaker systems. They ride through our neighborhoods with windows down, or they park on our streets with doors open, assaulting us with obscenely loud “music.” A truck depot backs up against our southern perimeter, and at times the music from employees’ cars thuds through our walls, shaking the windows in chapel and bedroom. Every so often I look up from my book: it is quiet! A momentary cease fire! I can hear the birds and the breeze. Then someone will drive by and unload another barrage at us.

Why this violence? We also hear occasional gunfire (the day before I arrived a man was killed on the next block), but the thudding music is so over the top and so pervasive that I have to wonder why they are doing this to us. And I think it must simply be small demonstrations of power by powerless people. Young people in the third world have been suppressed by a global economy that builds super wealth by enslaving most of the “colored” world. The sustainable culture of their parents has collapsed (“when I was a girl in Trinidad,” one of the older volunteers remarked, “men dressed like men and got jobs….”). Traditional family life, so disparaged by trend setters in first world countries, has almost entirely broken down. These young people have been beaten down and robbed of their identity. Their only way to exercise power, to get back at the world, is to blast it with reggae (and an occasional semi-automatic weapon). Some among our cultural elites occasionally express amusement at the notion of a culture war. I invite them to the slums of any third world country, to hear the sounds of war. This is where the effects of our culture wars play out on the street, and it’s not so amusing.

Loud noise panics me, especially subwoofer vibrations. My reaction is anger and sadness. Why are you persecuting me? But I see the Missionaries of Charity patiently accepting this random imposition on their prayer time, for love of their tormentors. They choose to live among these people because they love them. They see Christ in them. And so, it is the Missionaries who have the answer to violence and despair; their answer is the Sacred Heart. I saw with what joy they were adorning the chapel last night for today’s feast even as odious sounds pounded our house.

Consider the Scriptures today. From Hosea, Yahweh is deeply hurt at the rejection of his child Israel, but doesn’t react angrily: “My heart is overwhelmed [but] I will not give vent to my blazing anger…I am God, not man.” St. Paul preaches the “inscrutable riches of Christ,” that Jesus may dwell in your hearts, that you may “know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge.” And the Gospel. The Gospel! It is the crucifixion, the most irrational act of violence ever committed, and the soldier cuts open Christ’s heart. Out of this open heart pours, not venomous anger, but blood and water—the very substance of human life. His heart pours life into those who destroyed his life.

The sisters have it right. Only the Sacred Heart can answer the spiral of violent despair whipping up in our collapsing world culture. Only the patient, understanding love from the Heart of Jesus can bring peace and joy to the war-zone here in the slums of Trinidad.